Epitaxial growth of highly strained antimonene on Ag (111)

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the epitaxial growth of highly strained antimonene on Ag (111) substrates using molecular beam epitaxy, revealing a new method to synthesize this 2D material with significant tensile strain for potential quantum applications.

Contribution

It introduces a novel epitaxial growth technique for antimonene on Ag (111), achieving high tensile strain and detailed structural characterization.

Findings

Antimonene can be grown epitaxially on Ag (111) via molecular beam epitaxy.

The resulting antimonene exhibits a lattice constant of 5 Å, indicating over 20% tensile strain.

The strain enhances its potential for room-temperature quantum spin Hall effects.

Abstract

The synthesis of antimonene, which is a promising group-V 2D material for both fundamental studies and technological applications, remains highly challenging. Thus far, it has been synthesized only by exfoliation or growth on a few substrates. In this study, we show that thin layers of antimonene can be grown on Ag (111) by molecular beam epitaxy. High-resolution scanning tunneling microscopy combined with theoretical calculations revealed that the submonolayer Sb deposited on a Ag (111) surface forms a layer of AgSb2 surface alloy upon annealing. Further deposition of Sb on the AgSb2 surface alloy causes an epitaxial layer of Sb to form, which is identified as antimonene with a buckled honeycomb structure. More interestingly, the lattice constant of the epitaxial antimonene (5 {\AA}) is much larger than that of freestanding antimonene, indicating a high tensile strain of more than 20%. This kind of large strain is expected to make the antimonene a highly promising candidate for room-temperature quantum spin Hall material.